Chapter 25

“Did you just say ‘No thank you’? You did, didn’t you? You said ‘No thank you’ without a moment’s hesitation, did you not?” “…But, w-well, you said it, too, didn’t you?” “Of course I did! Oh, forget it already. I’ve had quite enough of being paired up with you! It’s obvious what happened that time was just a fluke, end of story!” With that, Yumiko threw back the rest of her tea in one gulp, slammed the cup back onto the saucer, stood up brusquely, and stomped toward the elevator. However, she stopped partway across the room and looked over her shoulder with a toss of her long hair. “You’d better be making a nice Christmas dinner tonight to make up for your rudeness today! I expect a cheesy seafood gratin and a nice meaty beef stew, got it?” Then, with a dramatic flourish, she used her accelerating abilities to propel herself to the elevator in a single step, jabbed the down button, and disappeared into the elevator. Minoru, incredulous, watched her leave and then sank back onto the sofa, muttering into his lemon tea: “…It’s impossible… I can barely pair up with her as a team, never mind as a couple…” “Ugh…well, I guess that’s it for today, then.” The Professor shook her head. “I’m still not giving up, though. The combination of your protective shell and her acceleration powers has incredible potential, after all. If you could master it, you’d have an attack that would be almost impossible to counter or defend against.” “Ah… Well, that may be true, but…” One week ago, in the battle against the Ruby Eye who could manipulate oxygen molecules freely, Igniter, Minoru had somehow absorbed Yumiko into his protective shell in order to defend her from the hydrogen explosions she had rushed into. Still inside the shell, Yumiko had used her accelerator powers to slam them into Igniter, knocking him out in a single blow. If they could use this same tactic at will, they would essentially have nothing to fear from any future Ruby Eye attacks. Between Minoru’s protective shell, which was harder than any known substance on Earth, and Yumiko’s ultrahigh speed, they would practically be invincible. Therefore, one week after the battle with Igniter, Professor Riri Isa had ordered a series of tests in an attempt to re-create that situation. However, Minoru had failed to envelop Yumiko in his protective shell every time he produced it, instead sending her flying into the polyurethane wall, which still showed the vague outline of her repeated impact. But I tried my best… Minoru was wrapped up in his thoughts when the Professor’s voice reached him again. “By the way…” “Y-yes?” “Have you given any thought to what we talked about before?” Minoru knew right away what she was talking about, but he still looked down, unable to give an immediate reply. Feeling her eyes on him as she intently awaited his response, he answered haltingly, searching for the right words. “…Yes…I understand that it would be best if I proceed as you suggested, Professor. But to be honest…I’m not sure if I can do it. Moving away…transferring to a new school…” “Nonetheless, Mikkun…” Still holding her café au lait, the Professor spoke in a voice that was at once quite serious and adorable. “Your request in exchange for joining the SFD was for Chief Himi to use his abilities to ‘erase any memories of you from existence,’ wasn’t it? If that day comes, won’t you have to move and change schools, anyway? Maybe you can think of this as practice for all that.” “…That’s true, but…” The Professor’s reasons for suggesting that Minoru move to SFD Headquarters were twofold: so that he would be more immediately available to fight against the Ruby Eyes and to prevent them from targeting his stepsister, Norie Yoshimizu. Ruby Eyes and Jet Eyes like Minoru and the others could detect the use of one another’s abilities from a fair distance away, so if Minoru were ever to activate his protective shell at home, there was a strong possibility that a Ruby Eye would figure out where he lived and attack Norie. No, there was more than a possibility—the first Ruby Eye Minoru had fought, the Biter, had already used just such a tactic. He’d saved Norie that time, but he couldn’t afford to let that happen again. But… At the school he currently attended, Yoshiki High School in Saitama, Minoru had gone to great pains to ensure that his presence was barely noticed by the other students. To Minoru, who feared above all else the creation of more painful memories, the very thought of going into a new and unknown environment was unbearable. Just picturing himself transferring into a new school and standing in front of a class of strangers made him break into a cold sweat. Minoru sank into silence and faintly heard the Professor heave another sigh. “Well…having you transfer schools is mostly just a matter of convenience, so that there won’t be any holes in your academic records. You don’t necessarily have to go every day, but you can’t exactly skip all the time, either. Take that into consideration and get back to me soon, okay? Well, anyway… I’d like to have some chocolate cake tonight, Mikkun.” “…Yes, ma’am.” Giving her a meek nod, Minoru roused himself, rose from the couch, and headed toward the kitchen, which stood across from the experiment space. 3 “…Well, it is too bad that the experiment didn’t work, but even if it had, in the end I’d still be going in alone today.” Awakening from his brief reverie, Minoru voiced this thought aloud, and Yumiko responded without removing her face mask from his. “…Why?” “I mean, if something happened inside and my protective shell vanished, both of us would go down at once. It’s better to minimize our losses, right?” “I don’t like the way you said that one bit.” With one more irritated huff, Yumiko pulled away. At last, the clock display ticked up to 10:00 a.m. Restoring their connection to the STS channel, Yumiko spoke now in a much more composed, businesslike voice. “Well then, let’s begin the operation. Isolator, please proceed to the air lock of nuclear reactor containment vessel number one.” “R…roger that.” Taking a deep breath, Minoru stepped forward with his right foot. He walked slowly and deliberately, mindful of the radiation screens that stood to his left and right. Along the way, he checked the screen of his wrist communicator, but the radiation levels in the air hadn’t risen much just yet. In a little over a minute, he halted, having reached the first checkpoint. “I’ve arrived in front of the air lock.” “Radioactivity level report?” “Um…currently 9.3 microsieverts per hour.” “Roger. Now please begin the locking mechanism release procedure.” “Roger,” Minoru responded, glancing over his shoulder. Yumiko and the two Self-Defense Forces personnel stood motionless next to the parked vehicle, watching him from about twenty-one meters away. Kakinari waved at him vigorously, and he quickly turned back before the urge to wave overcame him. Up close, he could see that the wall of the containment vessel was cracked and stained, the damage unchanged from the incident eight long years ago. The paint on the steel doors of the air lock was peeling away in places, too, with brown specks of rust blooming here and there along its surface. Above the door handle, a red light indicated that the lock was currently closed. On the other side of this door was a death trap, full of lethal levels of radioactivity. In fact, since they had measured the radioactivity levels in SFD Headquarters to be about 0.03 microsieverts per hour, the radioactivity levels out here were already three hundred times that of the Tokyo metropolitan area. Naturally, his adoptive stepsister and guardian, Norie, didn’t know anything about today’s mission. As a matter of fact, any time he had SFD business, he simply told her he was going to “a prep school in Tokyo.” Since he did occasionally study with Yumiko and the Professor at SFD Headquarters in their free time, it wasn’t a total lie, but that didn’t change the fact that he was deceiving his beloved stepsister. However, in reality he had already committed the ultimate betrayal of Norie by joining the SFD in exchange for the promise of eventually being erased from the memories of everyone around him. It wasn’t as though Minoru wanted to be separated from Norie. She was the only person with whom he could create new memories every day without fear. He would have liked to continue living with her…but doing so would mean tying the thirty-year-old to the role of being Minoru’s guardian indefinitely. No, things would be better for her this way. In order to allow Norie to forget about her adopted brother and live for her own happiness, Minoru would continue to fulfill his duties with the SFD to the best of his abilities—even if it meant fighting more Ruby Eyes…or retrieving a probe robot from a nuclear power plant. “…Releasing the lock now,” Minoru said into the headset, and he stepped up to the double doors to grip the locking mechanism with both hands. Just as he’d been instructed in a lecture earlier, he turned it to the left with all his might. It was difficult to budge at first—no doubt it hadn’t been opened very often, especially in recent years—but it was nothing his Third Eye–given strength couldn’t handle. After three full turns, there was the sound of the bolt creaking loose, and the indicator light turned bright green. “Release complete.” “Roger that,” Yumiko responded, her voice a bit tenser than before. “Commence opening the air lock.” “Understood…” Minoru shifted both hands back to the handle and again grasped it tightly. Though they hadn’t mentioned it to the Self-Defense Forces members, there was one more thing he had to do before opening these doors. Breathing in quietly through his mask, he filled his lungs with air and activated the small black sphere-shaped parasite that lived in his chest—his “Third Eye.” Minoru’s body floated up slightly inside his protective suit, and all outside sound was cut off at once. His view of his surroundings through the lead glass of his mask was tinted blue. Even the pressure of the mask’s elastic band and the weight of the tungsten-lined suit disappeared. This was Minoru’s power as a Jet Eye: the ability to create a colorless, transparent, and utterly indestructible protective shell that projected about three centimeters around his entire body. In other words, Minoru was currently encased in an insulated inner shell that fit to the contours of his body (and the small earpiece in his left ear), which in turn was protected by the tungsten suit. As his colleagues had confirmed in experiments at SFD Headquarters, the shell could deflect not only physical attacks but also electromagnetic and radio waves. As a result, it had so far been impossible to communicate via radio once Minoru was inside the shell, but they had recently come up with a solution. Between the headset in his left ear and the left side of his protective mask, there was a white LED light transmitter. The device was automatically activated when the protective shell cut off communications, at which point radio waves from Yumiko’s headset and the wrist communicator were now captured by the mask’s internal receiver, converted into light-wave communication in order to pass through the protective shell, and changed back into sound waves in Minoru’s earpiece. In the test run back at headquarters, it had permitted communication with no problems aside from a bit of time lag; DD, who designed and produced the device, had been extremely proud. I hope it still works now that we’re in the field… “I will now open the first door. Please be mindful of the radiation levels,” Minoru said hesitantly into the headset. “Roger. Be careful on your end, too.” Yumiko’s voice came through loud and clear, if with a little more white noise than before. Breathing a sigh of relief, Minoru checked that his connection with the wrist communicator was working as well, then grabbed hold of the door handle through the shield. Pushing against it hard, he slowly slid the door to the left. The small microphone in his earpiece picked up the loud grating noise as the first door creaked along the rusted rail. When it had moved about fifteen centimeters open, Minoru let go momentarily to check his wrist communicator. Though the radiation levels had increased to fifteen microsieverts per hour, it was still not high enough to be a serious threat. A second door awaited behind the first, visually identical to the first except that it had much less visible wear and tear. Since this door was already unlocked, he had only to grab on to the handle once again. “Opening the second door.” “Go ahead.” After this brief exchange, Minoru pushed with about the same force as before. Although the rail and wheels weren’t rusted, the second door put up much more resistance than the first. It was as though the building itself was refusing to be opened. Nonetheless, Minoru planted his feet firmly and pushed the door with all his weight.